[pups] roll-your-own-unibus boards? - TUHS

20 Jan 2004

Hi,

I asked this on the classic computer list and I thought I'd ask here
also...

Does anyone have any thoughts on how hard it would be to make a unibus
board which is an IDE controller?

I have 4-6 layer boards fabbed regularly and use modern CPLD's & VHDL on
a regular basis, so the building part looks easy.

I've never looked at unibus controlleqr schematic, but plan to.  I'm
assuming much of the old ttl can be sucked into something like a Xilinx
coolrunner CPLD...

I also assume it's reasonably straightforward TTL, and at (by today's
standards) slow speed... true?

Any hints, or gotcha's as far as fabrication or interface?  Has anyone
done this (in the modern day, that is :-)

My plan would be to build a 4 layer board of suitable thickness with
gold fingers, using an existing board for reference (any physical size
specs I could read?)

I'm well aware of the foolishness of this on one level, but there's a
side of me that really enjoys this sort of thing...  perhaps medication
would help :-)

-brad